Presentation and translation of “The aim of all life is death” – Schopenhauer and the death instinct of Freud”, by Marcel Zentner

Abstract

What follows is a presentation and translation of „Das Ziel alles Lebens ist der Tod”– Schopenhauer und Freuds Todestrieb, by Marcel Zentner (Zürich), published in: “RAINER, Specht (Org.). Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993, Vol. 75, p. 319 – 340”. It is an analysis of the problems involving the “topos” created by Freud, according to which his dualism of the instincts of life and death, set forth in Beyond the Principle of Pleasure (1920), brought him to “the port of Schopenhauer’s philosophy”. The fundamental differences of this dualism with the Schopenhauerian dichotomy of the affirmation and negation of the will deserve a detailed clarification, says Zentner, so as not to lose sight of the fact that Schopenhauer’s main anticipation of Freud concerns the conceptual complex articulated around the first theory of the instincts, the theory of repression and the “structural model of the psyche”.

Keywords

• Dualismo
• Monismo
• Pessimismo
• Escola de Schopenhauer
• Metapsicologia